


Impulse

by prairiecrow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Arabian Theme, Battle of Conscience, Bondage, Dominance, Holodecks/Holosuites, Infection, Lunch, M/M, No Means No, Seduction, Submission, Unexpected Kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unusual incident in the Replimat leaves Garak utterly dumbfounded... then hopelessly hooked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set between "Profit and Loss" and "The Wire".

"… so I said to myself, 'Really, a woman in charge of an entire host of diplomatic envoys should be trusted not to put plaid together with a floral pattern!'" Garak paused dramatically, giving Bashir the glance that was his cue to offer either enthusiastic agreement or a sharp rebuttal, but the Human wasn't on the mark: in fact he was far from it, picking at his slice of pie and studying his plate as if it contained a deep dark secret that he was charged with somehow unravelling.  
  
Garak was feeling generous, so he gave Bashir a full count of three seconds before prompting: "Doctor?"  
  
"Hm?" It took a moment but Bashir finally looked up, his hazel eyes briefly unfocussed. All around them the usual lunchtime babble of the Replimat continued unabated from every full table.  
  
"Are you even listening to me?"  
  
"Oh yes," Bashir agreed at once with such sincerity that Garak didn't doubt him, although the smile that spread across the narrow golden face seemed... off, somehow. "To every word." The smile widened. Yes, definitely not the usual timbre of what passed between them. "You really do have a  _magnificent_  voice, so… so expressive…"  
  
Garak kept his own smile polite, but mentally he took a big step backward, trying to get an accurate perspective on that unexpected remark as quickly as possible. "Really?" he asked mildly. "Because you seem… well, rather preoccupied."  
  
Bashir was gazing at him, unblinking, now completely focussed with an intensity that only added more spin to the situation. Garak didn't like it. He wasn't accustomed to a known quantity suddenly spitting out a completely unexpected variable, like that compliment — or the look on Bashir's face, soft and full of yearning. "Do I?" the Doctor asked, studying Garak so intently that he could feel the weight of it pressing on every scale. "Well, yes… I suppose I am. I never noticed…" He hooded his eyes and spoke in a lower, more caressing tone: "How did I never notice…?"  
  
"Doctor," Garak said sharply, every peripheral alarm suddenly going off at once. He rested his wrist on the table, not quite putting down his fork, and fixed Bashir with one of the less severe variations of the stare he applied when interrogating enemies of the State. "Listen to yourself! Are you sure you're feeling all —"  
  
He saw Bashir's expression shift, the softness becoming urgent determination, but he'd dropped so many of his shields around this man, become so accustomed to perceiving the Starfleet officer as a non-antagonist, that he didn't immediately leap from his seat when Bashir rose from his own. Only when the Human started to come around the table did he begin to push back his chair, but Bashir was too quick: he reached down, caught hold of Garak's shoulders, and pulled him to his feet with unexpected strength. Garak, caught flat-footed, opened his mouth to demand to know just what in the Nine Hells Bashir thought he was playing at —  
  
— only to have his mouth covered with a deep and passionate kiss as those strong brown hands closed in the fabric of his upper sleeves, pulling him closer and refusing to let him go.  
  
The fork clattered to the floor, completely forgotten as Garak grabbed at Bashir's waist, more to steady himself than anything else: he'd been pulled off-balance in more ways than one. Through the low moan of satisfaction Bashir was emitting against his lips he heard the background level of conversation in the Replimat die precipitously, replaced by a silence whose exactly quality was an enigma; Garak, himself, was so shocked that for a few seconds he did absolutely nothing except let himself be kissed by the eager, commanding, and surprisingly skilled young man. When their lips finally parted with a little wet  _smack_  he found himself staring up into Bashir's eyes, and realized that he was breathless, that he'd actually forgotten to breathe.  
  
Bashir studied his expression for less than a second, then smiled with catlike satisfaction, transferred one hand to the back of Garak's head and the other to the small of his back, and moved in again. This time Garak tried to evade him, but the fingers tangled in his hair hampered the escape attempt: he was being kissed again, and someone to his left and behind him gasped out what sounded like strangled embarrassed laughter, and he was finally starting to consider the best way to make Bashir let to of him without breaking something —  
  
— when the Federation officer's combadge emitted a bright chirp and a voice filtered out from between them:  
  
 _"Dax to Bashir."_  
  
That seemed to penetrate Bashir's obsession: the pressure of those full lips faltered, and then Bashir inhaled sharply and pulled back enough to look Garak in the eyes again, his expression flushed and dazed and starting to be confused.   
  
"Ah," he said, blinking rapidly. "Go ahead…"  
  
 _"I need to see you in the Infirmary right away,"_  Dax continued, as if she hadn't picked up on his dazed tone.  _"It looks like the Averal ambassador left us with more than just a set of trade agreements."_  
  
""I…" His dark eyebrows drew even closer together, the dusky skin between them furrowing as he continued to stare down into Garak's eyes. Without dropping his gaze Garak insinuated his right hand between their chests and applied brief pressure to Bashir's combadge.   
  
"Garak to Dax," he said, infusing his voice with authority leavened with just the right amount of concern. "I'm with Doctor Bashir, and I don't think he's —"  
  
"No," Bashir interjected after giving his head a little shake, "No, I'm…. Jadzia, are you still there?"  
  
 _"Yes, Julian."_  
  
"I think the Infirmary is exactly where I need to be." His hands didn't seem to want to let go; their grip tightened fractionally on Garak's tunic and hair before he was able to release the Cardassian and take a short step back, looking painfully perplexed. "I'll… I'll meet you there."  
  
 _"Acknowledged. Dax out."_  
  
For a second Bashir's hands, which had fallen to his sides, started to rise again, and Garak braced himself to fend off another attempt to grab him — but the Human stopped himself. He gazed at Garak for a long moment with a heightened blush on his sharp cheekbones, opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it tightly and started to back away. It took him another couple of seconds to tear his eyes away so he could turn around and head off down the Promenade toward the medical bay at an urgent pace, leaving Garak staring after him, and the entire Replimat staring at Garak, all of their meals momentarily forgotten.  
  
Through the pounding of his own heart Garak barely heard the sound of a Laraxian clearing his throat, followed by a rising murmur from the crowd full of puzzlement, amazement and enough hostility that he abandoned his own half-finished hasparat salad and retreated toward his shop, his pulse and his mind equally racing. He had no idea what had just passed between him and the good Doctor — but whatever it was, it had seemed as complete a surprise to Bashir as it had been to himself.  
  
And Garak was not a man who welcomed or trusted surprises.


	2. Chapter 2

Garak's Clothiers was uncommonly busy for the rest of the afternoon, which was  _not_  a surprise: Deep Space Nine had a rumour mill much more efficient than its air recyclers, and word that the Cardassian tailor had been soundly kissed —  _in public!_  — by the station's Chief Medical Officer whipped around the Promenade in both directions at roughly the speed of light. Naturally people had to get a looky for themselves, and consequently the door was whispering open and closed every few minutes in the face of a steady stream of "customers" who didn't really buy anything, only pretended to contemplate the fashions on display, or to ask for samples of fabric to finger and price, while what they really craved was a look at the resident dragon.   
  
 _Perhaps,_  Garak thought wryly as he laid out a sample of blue Andorian silk for the third time in an hour,  _they're hoping that the good Doctor's kiss has somehow transformed me into a prince._  But his face remained resolutely scaled, and the smile he offered, and the polite banter and the assiduous attention to detail, was no more and no less than what he'd presented in all the days (nay, years) before. As closing time drew near, word of that mundanity seemed to have gotten around as well: the shop had been empty for almost half an hour by the time he turned off the lights and locked up, and he received scarcely a glance out of place from the pedestrians he passed on his way to the turbolift, following his usual route.   
  
Now that he was alone, more or less, and didn't have to choreograph his dance in front of so many curious eyes, he could turn his mind to the matter of Bashir's spectacularly unexpected misbehaviour in the Replimat. What had Lieutenant Dax said about the ambassador leaving  _more than just a set of trade agreements_ … perhaps some infectious agent was involved? Yes, that would make sense: Bashir's lips had felt hot, almost feverish, but he was a mammal and Garak suspected that from a Cardassian point of view Humans would always feel rather incandescent to the touch. Certainly there'd been nothing wrong with his grip, which had been steady and strong — not a trace of a tremor of either weakness or uncertainty. No, Bashir had seemed to know exactly what he wanted, and to possess the wherewithal to stake his claim…  
  
Garak was startled to realize that he was hissing low in his throat, a melodic sub-vocalization that, mercifully, none of the species he was passing at the moment were equipped to pick up on. He shut it right down, appalled at his own lack of discipline. What was he thinking, uttering the  _kishaja_  like… like a supplicant! Why, he'd might as well go find Bashir and let himself be grabbed again — or worse, kneel in front of the slim sweet boy and bow his head to expose his spine, and extend his crossed wrists to —  
  
He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the Promenade, causing a Bajoran couple to almost run into him from behind. They angled past him with a hostile glare and a muttered racial slur from the male, but Garak scarcely heard them, and cared even less. For once his lack of concern was not the result of his implant: he was too engrossed in the way his pulse was throbbing under every scale at the thought of Bashir's hands — slender but strong, brown and oh, so capable…  
  
 _He was kneeling in the darkness and Julian was slowly circling him, so close that he could hear the whisper of that hopelessly ugly uniform against his skin as he paced, so close that he could smell the musky mammalian perfume of a healthy young male. His head was bowed, his fists clenched on his thighs, and as Julian laid hot fingers to his right neck ridge he began the_ kishaja _again, the ancient melody welling up from an instinct so deep that it made him tremble to his bones. All his conditioning, all his training, had been designed to forbid him this indulgence — but here he was, submitting to an alien officer's touch as it trailed up over the ridges adorning his ear and stroked unhurried fingers down through his hair, drawing the primal song from his core, seeking the nape of his neck and the armoured place where his spine met his skull. He growled at the unfamiliar contact, an intimacy permitted only between parents and very young children — or between lovers, not merely sexual partners but those who had established a degree of trust, or at least an understanding concerning who was in charge.  
  
He didn't need to see Julian's sleek smile to know it was there, as the man he met once a week for lunch and conversation shamelessly transgressed all boundaries by kneeling and wrapping one arm around Garak's waist and pushing aside the fall of Garak's hair to press those soft ardent lips to the hidden texture there, and —_  
  
Garak's eyes snapped open. His breath was coming deeply, flooding his lungs with oxygen and readying him for combat, and his fists were indeed clenched at his sides, nails digging painfully into the palms. He bared his teeth in a thin sliver of white snarl:  _How_ dare _he! How dare the impudent, brazen, insufferable child —!_  
  
It wasn't to be borne. Garak was an ordained  _ar'sikatar_ , an oathbound agent of the Obsidian Order even in exile, and to lay hands on him without express permission was to court death. Somebody needed to be taught that lesson immediately — or to be taught, at the very least, exactly who should be singing the  _kishaja_  in  _this_ relationship!  
  
He crossed to the nearest interface panel on silent feet and spoke in a silky tone: "Computer, locate Doctor Julian Bashir."  
  
 _"Doctor Bashir is in the Infirmary."_  
  
"Of course he is," Garak mused with a wider smile, and headed thence at once with a measured predatory stride, his imagination spinning all sorts of forceful and felicitous outcomes.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	3. Chapter 3

He would have entered the Infirmary completely unannounced if it weren't for the whisper of the door as it opened, but that was all right: there was nobody in the main room except Julian, and the seated Human seemed so intent on whatever the console in front of him was displaying that he didn't even look round when Garak stepped into his domain. The good Doctor's head was tilted back a little as he gazed up at the screen, a position that did nothing to conceal the bareness of the nape of his neck, the way his short-cropped hair displayed what was, in Cardassian culture, a very provocative expanse of skin. Looking at those smooth silky centimetres of exposed flesh Garak felt his smile, which had been a mask of mildness in the public space of the Promenade, become more overtly predatory: while peripherally aware that among Humans such bareness meant nothing, he found himself unable to properly appreciate cultural relativity at this particular moment. He approached with perfectly trained stealth, his booted feet making no sound on the carpeted floor, until he was right behind Julian (who was now gazing down at the control interface and inputting commands) and could place his hands on the young man's shoulders much as he had at their first meeting: slowly, deliberately, a signal of dominance and of laying claim.   
  
Julian's shoulders stiffened; he looked sharply up and around, then relaxed with a smile of recognition and relief. "Garak! You startled me."  
  
 _Not half as much as_  you've _startled_ me _, my young friend,_  Garak thought, but instead he smiled more widely and said: "I do apologize, my dear Doctor, but you seemed so intent on your work, I didn't want to disturb you."  
  
The Human glanced back up at the screen, which, Garak's lust-obsessed mind now dimly apprehended, displayed a schematic of a Bajoran neural cluster. "You're not, really — I've just wrapped up my assessment of the efficacy of the new amitron compound I whipped up earlier today on the…"  
  
Garak lost interest. While Julian babbled on about the Averal delegation and viral parasite this and disinhibition that, he kept the smile plastered on his face and let his hands savour the contours of the slim shoulders they rested upon: clear to be felt even through the padding of that hideous uniform, especially when he ran them slowly down to the sides, where the heat of the skin could be felt through the soft fabric. And the  _scent_  that rose to tease him… the animal musk of Humans was so different from that of Cardassians, richer and saltier, and full of the most promising heat… promising such strength…  
  
"Garak?" Julian's voice snapped him out of his reverie instantly. He realized that he'd been looking without seeing, his mind's eye turned inward, back toward that place of shadows and submission: Julian had twisted his neck to look up at him, a frown creasing his adorable furry eyebrows. He also realized that his grip had settled on the Human's upper arms, where Julian had grabbed  _him_  during lunch in fact, and tightened much more than was consistent with mere friendship.  
  
"Yes, my dear?" He should let go. He didn't want to.   
  
"Do you realize that you're… well, hissing?"  
  
He was, but the  _kishaja_  felt as natural as his heartbeat, so he spoke through it: "Am I? Isn't that curious…" He cocked his head a little to one side, flickering his eyelids in pure coquettishness. "Perhaps you should examine me — purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry, of course!"  
  
"Of course," Julian said, although he sounded far more skeptical than flirtatious. He looked down at Garak's left hand, still curved firmly around his bicep, then up at Garak again, who was pressed right up against the back of his chair. "You'll need to let go of me first."  
  
"If I do," Garak responded, lacing his voice with sexual challenge, "do you promise to make it worth my while?"  
  
"You have my word as a Starfleet officer," Julian said at once, and because he was a man of honour Garak released him and stepped away, giving him room to roll back his chair and rise to his feet, heading for a stand-alone cart situated in the centre of the room. "Computer, load a hypospray with three cc's of amitron compound Bashir Beta."  
  
Garak followed him closely, alert for betrayal — and sure enough, when the station emitted a melodious beep Julian pulled a hypospray from its dock and turned around, speaking in a soothing and reasonable tone: "Garak, you've obviously been infected, but an injection of this will quickly set you —"  
  
Garak barely heard him. All his senses were focussed on the warm-blooded prize only an arm's-length away, but deeply ingrained combat instincts reacted to the threat instantly. Because of his affection for Julian he did not strike to incapacitate or to kill: instead he stepped right up against the taller man's chest, his left hand snaking out to close around the wrist of the hand holding the hypospray, effectively immobilizing it, while his right hand clamped around Julian's left forearm, pinning it to his narrow hip.  
  
Caught in the grip of a full-grown male Cardassian, between that Cardassian's body and the heavy cart, Julian didn't try to fight his way free. He fixed Garak with a stern gaze instead. "Let me go, Garak."  
  
"Oh, I don't think so," Garak purred, and tightened his grip fractionally. "I'm finding this far too gratifying, although I'd much prefer to be —" He caught himself just short of revealing too much, of giving Julian a crucial clue to what the sing-song susurration behind his words meant, and in his anger at himself he bore down harder on Julian's wrist, fingertips digging in toward the nerve clusters there.  
  
Julian's eyes narrowed in a wince of pain. "You're hurting me," he said, his voice still even, his glare now commanding. "Let me  _go_ , Garak! I know you're not yourself right now, but —"  
  
"Let you go? Now that I've caught you?" The words were dominant, but the underlying hiss was submissive, and he hated himself for it. "Do you think me so inconstant, my pretty fool, to have come for you and let myself be turned away by mere words?" He heard the door whisper behind him, distant, inconsequential; Julian's gaze slid past him, hazel eyes widening, and he shifted his right hand to seize the back of that impossibly delicate Human neck and gave Julian a little shake to focus his attention again, leaning closer to hiss in his ear: "To be claimed, and not to claim in my turn? How little you understand! Listen carefully,  _sh'arasa_ , because I'll only say this once —"  
  
A voice sharply spoke his name. A female voice. He paid no attention.  
  
"— and if you disobey I'll be forced to correct you." He ran his fingers up into the short hair at the back of Julian's skull, the short hair that so tantalizingly displayed the vulnerability of the Human's  _erost_ , to caress that most intimate of places. "First, there are certain words you must never —"  
  
Footsteps behind him, approaching fast, but the alarms of his trained reflexes didn't go off in time. He felt the hypospray being taken from Julian's hand and applied to the side of his throat and triggered, just in front of the left neck ridge — and at last he was forced to release the enthralling boy and turn, uttering an explosive growl at Jadzia Dax, who had taken the precaution of backing out of arm's reach after administering the medication.  
  
He glared at her for a precious second as the universe started to float around him, then turned on his heel to face Julian again, managing not to stumble over his own feet. The Human was looking at him with compassion and pity in equal measure, a combination that fired his rage and excoriated his heart.  
  
"I would have been shorn for you!" he cried in a voice pathetically thin, knowing it was all he had time for — and then the world slid sideways from under him and he plunged with it, down into a darkness that stripped him of urgency, of doubt, of loathing, of desire… of everything.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	4. Chapter 4

Precisely three and a half hours later Garak was sitting at the neat work desk in his spartan quarters, a glass of liquor from his precious stock of kanar in one hand and his forehead in the other, fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to just bolt down five measures of the stuff in one go and put himself out of his misery rather than hang onto whatever was left of his self-control. It certainly couldn't make matters any worse.   
  
About forty-five minutes previous he'd woken up on a biobed in the Infirmary, bathed in blinding light, with a pounding headache that even his implant wasn't dampening and Nurse Jabara Elin leaning over him, informing him that he was going to be just fine once the side effects of the amitron compound (which had counteracted the effects of the neural virus the Averal ambassador had set loose on the station) were out of his system. Garak had refused to lie back and wait to feel better: given the memories that came rushing in along with the pain he was absolutely horrified at the thought of facing Doctor Bashir, who mercifully was nowhere to be seen. Thanking whatever Gods might exist that even Federation officers had to use the bathroom occasionally, Garak got himself upright and dressed and out of there in what had to be record time, resolutely ignoring Jabara's repeated instructions to get back on the bed and let himself be tended to. He'd brushed her off with a glib remark about the hardiness of Cardassian physiology and sailed out onto the Promenade with what he hoped was a jaunty stride, refusing to let any trace of his expression or body language betray how the abysmally glaring lights of the station were drilling into his eyes like the spines of an Esarelite wildebeest, or how he felt like his brain was trying to burrow its way out through his forehead ridges.  
  
The worst of the pain was past, fortunately — physically speaking, that is. Mentally he'd been flagellating himself without respite, his eidetic memory replaying every humiliating second of his interaction with Bashir after arriving at the Infirmary. Arriving? No, his transgression warranted a far less neutral term than that: he'd prowled in like a riding hound looking for a gobbet of meat from its master, his intent to dominate, his heartfelt desire to have the tables turned on him. Had Bashir known enough to take firm hold of his neck ridges through his tunic and administer punishing pressure with those deft brown fingertips he'd have sunk to his knees and assumed the posture of supplication, bowing his neck as others had bowed their necks before him, as he had always been forbidden to do himself.   
  
 _An agent of the Order does not submit,_  he could hear old Rekerit saying as clearly as if the spare-fleshed elder were standing in the same room, leaning over the desk to fix him with a severe stare that bore the weight of immutable Tradition.  _An agent of the Order must_ never _submit, even if it is otherwise… in his nature._  The rich contempt in those cultured tones made Garak flinch, even in memory.  _He never performs the_ kishaja _, he never exposes his nape, and he never permits himself to entertain the slightest inclination to do so. One moment of weakness would be the ruination of all his hard-won power._  
  
Garak tossed back the rest of the kanar and poured himself another glass, his third of the night. Another two and he might start to feel the effects of intoxication; as it was, the biting taste of it was comforting, familiar, a remnant of the home he had long since lost.  
  
 _So what else do I have to lose?_  The question made him pause with the glass halfway to his lips, staring into its clouded blue depths as if into an oracle.  _The boy didn't hesitate to take a kiss, when he wanted it. What if —_  He laughed, a dark bitter bark of sound, and put the glass aside, the better to bury his face in both hands, shutting out the painful light.  _But that was the infection talking and acting, not_ him.  _He doesn't want me — and even if he did, I could never…._  
  
He could never… what? Permit himself to act upon what Bashir, innocent brazen pup that he was, had tapped into without knowing what he triggered? Surrender to those sure hands and bold eyes? Yield to that demanding mouth? Offer freely to the boy what no other man could — or would dare try — to take: his dominance?  
  
 _Oh yes,_  a voice deep within Garak whispered, deeper than the kanar had yet reached and silenced:  _Yes, and gladly, if he'd —_  
  
"He doesn't," Garak said aloud, harshly, his eyes narrowing to glints of pure ice that shivered on the verge of breaking. "He's never shown the slightest inclination toward anything but the company of lovely young ladies. Never."  
  
 _Until today. Those kisses felt pretty damned sincere, didn't they? Not a second's hesitation or revulsion. He drank you in like… well, like a thirsty man drinks kanar._  
  
Garak laughed again, sounding weary in his own ears. "If he did, he chose an old and degraded vintage." He wasn't in the habit of talking to himself and briefly wondered if it was a lingering effect of the neural virus. "I do have to wonder, though, when the ungainly child became so…"  
  
 _Masterful?_  the voice prompted unhelpfully.  
  
"I was going to say 'self-assured', but yes, that term would also suffice."   
  
 _You have no one to blame but yourself, you know._  Mean-spirited now, and acerbic.  _The first time you met him he was a nervous fluttering mess, and you said to yourself:_ I can take that young man in hand and train him up, non-Cardassian though he is. I can make him something better, something that almost fits his own inflated self-image.  _And you did exactly that, didn't you? You honed him on the whetstone of debate and were so pleased when he took an edge so well, and you fed him on scraps of information and carefully groomed him… you teased and tested him, fenced and flirted, weaving a clever patterned dance to hold his interest…_  
  
"Why?" he asked the empty room almost plaintively. "Why did I… he's not even a  _sar'havat!_  At least a  _sar'havat_ would be a fellow Cardassian!"  
  
 _You danced for him, and now you're surprised that he's acted on it, after growing confident under your careful tutelage?_  
  
"He never noticed before." A low groan, full of aching misery. "He was never  _supposed_  to notice…"  
  
 _And he never would have, at least not consciously, if that thrice-cursed Averal hadn't dropped her viral payload and rewired his too-clever brain._  It dropped to a vicious murmur, a hiss devoid of all pleasure.  _So where does that leave you, Garak? No, wait, let me tell you! It leaves you in a position where the one person on this entire wretched station who viewed you with anything close to friendliness will want to avoid you for the rest of his tour of duty, and rightly so, even if he has no real concept of just how far you've betrayed your —_  
  
"No!" Garak shot to his feet and began to walk, restlessly pacing the perimeter of his prison-within-a-prison, not even seeing the tasteful decoration of it: only the walls, the walls that bound him. "No… I can bring him back around. He's improved, yes, but he's still a gullible —"  
  
 _Beautiful? Daring? Enticing?_  
  
"— a gullible boy." He spoke in a rush, a breathless spill of words. Oh, he was ill, but he had no one to turn to for succor and so many who wanted him to suffer. "A child who'll believe anything he's told. I'll tell him I don't remember a thing — that the whole episode is a blank to me. I'll convince him that I was so desperately sick that nothing I said or did can be held against me. Yes! Yes, he'll be ready to believe that, because I  _do_  intrigue him and really, who else does he have who challenges him the way I do? Chief O'Brien? Please! Jadzia Dax? The woman won't give him the time of day, not the way he wants! Not the way  _I_  could give him —"  
  
 _Yourself?_  
  
He stopped dead in his tracks, almost back at his desk again, and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes with painful force, while the voice spoke again, an acidic blast that even the anodyne of his implant couldn't counteract:  _You pathetic, perverted old fool._  
  
He was opening his mouth again, even though he had no words to deny the accusation, when the door chime sounded its piercing warble and chilled him to the marrow of his bones.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	5. Chapter 5

For a few long seconds there was silence from the outer hallway, and Garak, who aside from lowering his hands from his face had remained stock-still, was beginning to hope that whoever-it-was had gone away again when a too-familiar voice came through the closed door: "Garak? It's me — Doctor Bashir."  
  
Garak's heart, which had begun pounding with apprehension, sank toward his bowels. If he could have frozen its beating he would have; as it was, he didn't even dare draw breath. If he didn't answer, if he made absolutely no sound —  
  
"I know you're in there," Bashir continued, "I heard you talking just now." Another dreadful pause, long enough for Garak to wonder how much those keener Human ears had picked up of his ramblings, before Bashir spoke again, a little more softly this time, so that Garak had to listen intently to make out the words: "Let me in, Garak. Please? We need to talk." The space of an unheard breath. "You know we do."  
  
Garak had been trained to act in accordance with his instincts when the mental turmoil provoked by too many conflicting emotions threatened to overwhelm him — and that training, at least, held good. He turned around, crossed to the door, and opened it to reveal Bashir's slim figure, squared shoulders and solemn face. "Ah, Doctor!" he said brightly, a little puzzled that there wasn't more animosity in evidence. "What a pleasant surprise!"   
  
"Hello, Garak." The Doctor was studying Garak's expression, which he'd schooled to one of polite interest with a trace of regret.  
  
"I'm terribly sorry, but I'm rather busy with my end-of-month accounts. If we could —"  
  
"May I come in?"  
  
The tone, even but firm, caught Garak's attention: Bashir was phrasing it as a request, but it was actually an order. They'd engaged in many heated discussions over the past few months, and Bashir had directed a flash of outright anger at him during the business with the Cardassian orphans, but this was new — and unexpected. Intrigued, he stepped aside to let the Human brush past him into his room. "You may. But I'll warn you, I'm not prepared to receive guests."  
  
"That's quite all right," Bashir said, sweeping the room with a quick glance before turning his attention back to Garak, his hands clasped behind his back. "I won't be staying long. I just came to tell you that I've had a talk with Odo and with Jadzia — and that I understand certain things much better now."  
  
"Do you?" The words were empty pleasantries, beneath which Garak's mind was racing to find some way, any way, to turn this situation to his advantage. He wasn't coming up with much at the moment because he had no idea where Bashir was going with it. To conceal his uncertainty he crossed back toward his desk with elaborate casualness, trying to look completely at his ease.  
  
Bashir nodded. "Quark was very helpful as well. Did you know that he's been running a betting pool for the past four months based on when you were going to make a move on me?"  
  
Well, so much for being completely at his ease — but he didn't pause or falter, reaching his chair and settling into it and leaning back, resting his hands lightly on its arms, to regard the Human with benign curiosity. "'Make a move on you'? What an odd turn of phrase! Does it mean something in —"  
  
"And Odo," Bashir continued, his eyes never leaving Garak's face, "was kind enough to inform me about the  _kishaja_ , and the cultural significance of the term  _sh'arasa_."  
  
Garak tried not to squirm inside his tunic. He didn't quite succeed. "Doctor, I'm afraid I have no idea what you're —"  
  
"And I had no idea that you preferred me on my knees." Bashir took a step forward, advancing only a small span of centimetres, but Garak almost flinched back as if his own personal space had been transgressed, an effect not lessened by the shift in Bashir's tone, now overtly demanding. "And I want to know how long this has been going on."  
  
The overbearing timbre of that melodiously accented voice sent a hot thrill up Garak's spine to settle, tingling, under the heavy fall of his hair. "As I was about to say, your accusations leave me completely puzzled. Whatever I've said or done to offend you, I sincerely apologize — but honestly, the last thing I remember about this afternoon was leaving my shop after the —"  
  
Bashir was already moving, striding to the desk and around it, reaching out to take hold of the chair on either side of Garak's shoulders and spin it around to face him. Leaning close, scowling, he overrode Garak's protest with a low but adamant declaration: "I've had enough of your games, Garak! You came to the Infirmary this afternoon and practically assaulted me, and definitely called me a prostitute, and you —"  
  
"A  _prostitute?_ " Garak's bark of laughter was incredulous; he gripped the chair's arms with almost painful pressure for a half-second before pushing off, rising to his feet and forcing Bashir back a step, barely restrained fury blazing in his eyes. "As usual, your grasp of Cardassian cultural subtleties is woefully inadequate! A much better translation would be 'courtesan' — and who, exactly, are _you_  to stand on such sanctimonious outrage? Need I remind you that  _you_  were the one who kissed  _me_ , without so much as a by-your-leave?"  
  
Bashir regarded him levelly. "No," he said quietly, without a trace of anger. "No, I remember that perfectly well. And I'm sorry if I crossed some cultural line — but I'm not sorry that I did it."  
  
Garak, his mouth open to continue the attack, felt all the blood drain from his face and thanked the long-dead Hebitian Gods that Cardassian skin didn't reveal such things.  
  
"And judging by your actions in the Infirmary," Bashir concluded, "neither are you." He stepped forward again, pressing the length of his body lightly to Garak's own, his hands coming to rest on Garak's waist, and whispered in his ear: "You even said that you'd be shorn for me, that you'd offer me one of the most unequivocal signs of submission a Cardassian male is capable of — as plain as the  _kishaja_ , isn't that right?"  
  
So shocked that even the power to speak seemed to have deserted him, Garak closed his mouth and nodded, once.  
  
After a second or two Bashir sighed, and Garak stiffened even further, his hands closing into fists, ready for the Starfleet officer to pull away and take his leave of the shattered remnants of their imperfect friendship. Instead the Human let go of his waist and put both arms around him, pulling him closer with a half-laughing murmur: "My God, Garak… why didn't you  _say_  something?"  
  
"Why didn't you?" he countered — not the most eloquent rebuttal of his life, but seldom in his span of decades had his mind reeled this dramatically, spun off-balance by the combination of lingering illness and stimulating companionship and the overwhelming sensory input of a warm willing body in space that had been empty for so long. The pressure of Bashir's right hand sliding up his back and under the fall of his hair, unerringly seeking the jointure of his  _erost_  to explore it with a surgeon's sure touch, made him bite back another hiss, his cheeks flushing with warmth that his coloration mercifully concealed. "Doctor, please — you shouldn't —"  
  
"But I am." He traced the arch of the topmost cervical vertebra, sending a shockwave of electric heat down Garak's spine, awakening his  _trasekt_  and freeing a helpless exhalation. "Good?"  
  
"Yessss…" He closed his eyes and reached up, wrapping his arm around the slender body that shouldn't have been so strong.   
  
And then Bashir did the last thing Garak would have expected, even under these unthinkable circumstances: he bent his head to touch his lips to the few centimetres of right neck ridge visible above Garak's collar — and then bit it, hard, making him writhe and hiss-gasp: " _Doctor!_ "  
  
"Julian," Bashir muttered around his mouthful of Garak's flesh, and bit again, making Garak weak in the knees.  
  
"… Julian…" he conceded, wondering if he could possibly be dreaming, or if his implant had finally overloaded and was providing him with one final vision of illusory paradise before burning out his brain completely.   
  
Again that relentless whisper: "This is what you want, isn't it?"  
  
"I —" He had to breathe. He had to take back control. He shifted his grip to Julian's sides, to push him away, but the Human wasn't letting go. "Of course not! I don't know what nonsense the Constable told you, but —" He pushed again, harder. Julian refused to budge. "Let  _go_  of me, or I'll —!"  
  
Julian didn't respond — not verbally. Instead he stopped caressing Garak's  _erost_  and transferred his hand to the struggling Cardassian's left neck ridge and applied a punishing grip, fingertips digging into the nerve-rich stretches of skin that bordered the scales. What was left of Garak's breath escaped him in a sharp gasp: his eyes opened wide, his knees gave way, and he sank back into his desk chair, Julian's left hand catching him under his upper arm and guiding him safely down.   
  
For a long span of seconds he stared up at the young Human, who gazed back at him with eyes that keenly evaluated every aspect of his appearance, those long brown fingers still commanding his full attention. He was certain that what the Doctor was seeing was a unique sight in this universe, because Garak had never before permitted himself to display this state of… discomfiture, in the presence of another living being. He knew he was breathing too deeply, that his pupils were too dilated and the skin fringing his scales was too dusky a shade of grey for propriety, but how could a non-Cardassian be aware of what that meant? Even a non-Cardassian who had, it seemed, questioned Odo carefully and thoroughly — a Changeling had been a close observer of Cardassians and their customs for many years?  
  
An observer who had known what the  _kishaja_  meant, and that the literary trope of a Cardassian male having his proud crest of black hair cropped short to display the nape of his neck was cultural shorthand for sexual surrender…  
  
"All right," Julian said at last, and released him, straightening and taking a step back, thus making it easier for Garak to catch his breath. "If this isn't what you want right now, I'm not going to press you."  
  
"I…" He could feel that his hair was in disarray, a sight that any Cardassian would have found wildly provocative, but resisted the urge to smooth it down. That would be too vulnerable a gesture. "I appreciate that, Doctor."  
  
Those penetrating hazel eyes continued to scan him. "But… if you change your mind, I am going to be in Holosuite Four tomorrow night at about this time. I'll be running a program based on Earth history, and specifically on the culture of my ancestors. You might find it intriguing, and I'd certainly welcome your company."  
  
Garak studied him in turn, relieved to be free of that disconcerting touch but still profoundly uneasy with all that he'd revealed. "That… sounds very interesting," he said carefully. "And will Chief O'Brien be joining you as well?"  
  
"Oh no," Julian said with a trace of a smile both inviting and challenging. "It will be just you and me. I have  _so_  much I'd like to show you, you see — he'd only be in the way."  
  
Suddenly Garak's mouth was dry. "Well, I do have a bodice that I need to finish for that Bolian trader I've told you about — a woman of rather difficult dimensions — and my shop accounting might still need some attention…"  
  
"Of course," Julian said, but the gleam in his eyes told Garak that he already knew he'd won — and was enjoying himself immensely. It made Garak hot under every scale.  
  
"… but if I can carve free an hour or two, I'd be delighted to join you."   
  
Julian nodded, a trace of that self-satisfied smile lingering. "Well then, I won't keep you from your work any longer. Until then?"  
  
"Until then," Garak agreed, and watched him recross the room and head out the door with his shoulders squared and his head held high, a triumphant general departing the field of battle, leaving his opponent to survey the devastation and meditate in confusion upon his own ruin.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	6. Chapter 6

After such a resounding upset Garak could have been expected to spend a restless and wretched night, but in fact the opposite turned out to be the case: he enjoyed, actually  _enjoyed_ , a final glass of kanar, slowly sipping it while staring into middle space and replaying every detail of his latest interaction with the infuriating Human, absorbing the impact of it through repetition. And when he'd finished his drink he changed for bed and fell asleep almost as soon as his head came to rest on the thin pillow, a deep replenishing repose from which he awoke alert and refreshed.  
  
He donned one of his most flattering tunics, a slimming style with playful flashes of purple intercutting the burgundy brocade texture, and all day long he went about his business at a brisk pace, serving the slightly greater than usual number of customers coming through his doors with a cheerful smile even though he knew that news of his counterattack in the Infirmary was probably behind their attendance. He let the hours slip by like water through his hands, smooth and unimpeded save for the occasional rocky stretch of savage protest from the voice of Tradition:  _Surely you're not going to actually_  go  _to him! Exiled and addicted you might be, but you're not insane!_    
  
"Perhaps I am," he murmured while pinning up the back of a skirt, and if the woman he was fitting overheard the comment she didn't remark upon it. More importantly, Rekerit's echo fell silent and abandoned him to his fate until he had closed up his shop and returned to his quarters, when as he was disrobing for a shower it pounced on him with a burst of withering condemnation:  
  
 _Tain will know, and when he finds out —_  
  
"Tain will approve of the subtlety of my work, in taking this opportunity to become intimate with an officer from the enemy's military." He padded naked into the bathroom and stepped into the shower, calling for the expensive luxury of real hot water, and turned his face up to the steamy blast, sighing as its heat began to penetrate his permanently chilled muscles.   
  
 _That's not why you're doing this, and you know it._  
  
"Well," Garak responded lightly, " _I_  may know that, and  _you_  may know that, but  _Tain_ , last I'd heard, is not a telepath.  _He_  will not —"  
  
 _He knows the quality of his own flesh and blood, muddied through it's become through a servant's contamination. Do you think this didn't show up on your psychological evaluations? Or that he hasn't taken pride in how well you've overcome your baser instincts?_  
  
"Tain hasn't taken pride in me for a very long time." He picked up the bar of soap, as expensive an indulgence as the water, and lathered up thoroughly. "Don't try to trick me with hope, you second-rate ghost: it's long since lost the ability to sway me."  
  
 _Then what do you call what you're feeling right now, preening yourself to go to the arms of a Human lover?_  Its contempt grew even more scathing.  _And not to take him, as is your proper role, but to let yourself be taken instead? By a non-Cardassian! If he calls you his_ sh'arasa _, how could you possibly deny the charge?_  
  
Garak laughed aloud at the way the words slid off his armour, their venom stimulating only a dim ache of guilt — and when, in the last five years, had he not felt some trace of that? "Maybe I won't! Wouldn't Tain have something to roar about then, hm?"  
  
Rekerit, it seemed, had nothing to say in response to such blithe and shameless rejection of everything that was ethical and proper. Garak made it through the shower and into his finest suit of clothes in peace, and after a light meal quickly taken he was on his way to Quark's, possessed by that soaring exhilaration he always felt when embarking wholeheartedly on a deadly dangerous mission, confident in his own skills and instincts, nimble and lethal — every detail of his determined stride and direct gaze and perfect poise projecting understated but relentless dominance.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	7. Chapter 7

Quark's Bar was in somewhat of a lull period when Garak entered, but the eyes of the patrons scattered around the tables and seated at the bar turned to him immediately, putting him on alert. He set his features in a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth expression, reminding himself that it didn't matter if he was noticed: he wasn't on a covert mission, and as the only Cardassian on the station he tended to draw attention to himself as a matter of course. Most of the gazes settled on him only briefly before turning back to their food or drink or their own companions. One did not.  
  
"Ah! Garak!" Quark put down the glass he was wiping and scrambled out from behind the bar, hastening over with a wide and nervous smile. "I'm glad I caught you! There's —"  
  
He kept right on walking, barely gracing the bartender with a glance. "I'm sorry, Quark, but I really don't have time for —"  
  
Quark caught up with him and stepped in front of him, halting his progress just before he reached the foot of the spiral staircase, still talking: "Doctor Bashir is waiting for you in Holosuite Four, but," and his voice fell to a confidential murmur, "he doesn't want anyone else to disturb you, so he had me place a lock on the suite. The access code is…" And leaning even closer, he whispered a sequence of numbers that Garak, trained in the art of eidetic recall, immediately consigned to accurate memory. He was pleased to note that in light of the recent nasty (and almost fatal) business with Natima Lang the Ferengi had the excellent sense not to offer so much as a hint of a leer as he conveyed the necessary information, and to look uneasy as he waited for Garak's response.  
  
"Well," Garak said after giving him a couple of seconds to sweat, "I'm glad you caught me as well."  
  
Quark shrugged and spread his hands, showing far too many pointed little teeth. "You know me, always eager to help!"  
  
"I won't forget this," Garak told him, granting him a trace of an enigmatic smile and a little bow, then started walking again, forcing Quark to hop sharply to get out of his way. There: worrying about exactly  _what_  Garak wouldn't forget should keep that gossipy mouth shut, or at least much more discreet than was its wont. Heading up the stairs, Garak didn't have to glance back to read Quark's uneasy expression, and had no interest in doing so. His mind was already focussed on entirely different matters.  
  
The code, tapped into the holosuite's access panel, opened the door for him — and released a breath of warmth that, although drier than Garak would have liked, was still a pleasant surprise. The space beyond the portal was dark and sparkled with distant stars; he stepped through it onto yielding ground, his eyes adjusting instantly as the doors whispered closed behind him and the environment regained its full illusory integrity. He was standing beneath a full moon smaller and paler than that of his homeworld, in the midst of a desert that stretched unbroken to the horizon in all directions but one: about fifty metres directly ahead of him lay a small grouping of tall trees, bare save for clusters of long fringed leaves at their apexes. They waved gently in the night breeze that whispered past them in Garak's direction, and Garak, drawing a deeper breath, could clearly smell the water that must be sustaining them.   
  
Close beside the trees stood the only other source of light: a colourfully striped tent, ten metres square and softly lit from within, with three slim-legged quadrupeds of roughly equivalent size to riding hounds picketed along one side. Garak set out for it at a brisk pace, the muscle memory for how to walk best in sand quickly reasserting itself, and by the time he'd reached the thin curtain that covered the entrance he was realizing that although the desert simulation was warmer than the station's ambient temperature he'd still done well to wear his thermal underclothes. Another scent was reaching his nose now, a lightly floral incense, and as he lifted the curtain, having to bend his knees slightly and duck his head to slip through, he found a gorgeously splendid setting laid out before him.  
  
The room, which took up perhaps half of the tent's interior space, was hung with elaborate tapestries and carpeted with rich rugs and liberally supplied with pillows, illuminated by small hanging oil lamps that were kindly to Cardassian eyes — and most encouragingly, warmed by a beautiful iron brazier full of glowing coals which stood just beyond the room's centre point. Two low couches faced each other across a knee-high round table at the precise centre of the space, and there… ah, there waited the most exquisite element of all.  
  
The good Doctor was sitting on the left-hand couch, sipping a pale green drink from a small glass — no, not merely sitting, he was artistically draped against the back of the couch, his long limbs elegantly arranged, his hazel eyes hooded as they turned from contemplating the brazier and his whole face lighting up when he saw that it was Garak stooping to enter the tent. He was clad in an outfit Garak had never seen him wear before, and with good reason: it covered enough of him to be considered technically decent, although the "V" of the white silk shirt's neck plunged daringly low to display an expanse of smooth caramel chest, and the short and garishly colourful vest, which would have provided more cover had it been closed, was hanging open, but the pants… aside from being almost painfully purple, they alternately clung and flowed in a way that blatantly flattered certain intimate contours of the young man's slender figure, and below the loose hems of the trousers his brown feet were bare.  
  
Garak stopped in his tracks for a fraction of a second, staring, before recovering with a tiny blink and resuming his advance. Surely the Human had no idea what a provocative signal those bare feet were in Cardassian terms, although he doubtless had precisely calculated the effect of the rest of his ensemble. In the warm lamplight his exposed skin glowed with a dusky golden hue, alien and delightful, and his smile was sweetly welcoming. "Ah, Garak!"  
  
"Doctor," he nodded, and deliberately did not run his gaze over every centimetre of beauty offered for his consideration, keeping his attention focussed on that smooth face. "I hope I'm not too early."  
  
"Actually, no — you're just in time." He sat up a little and shifted over a few centimetres in unmistakable invitation, and after a moment's hesitation — really, he should have taken a seat on the opposite couch — Garak joined him, lowering himself carefully into position at about a half an arm's length distance. Now that he was here and faced with such overwhelming sensuality the voice of his conscience was beginning to mutter again, prompting him to maintain a stiffly upright posture as Julian turned to face him and settled down again, resting his right upper arm along the back of the couch and his cheek on the curved fingers of that hand, tucking one slim foot behind his other knee. His stare was shamelessly direct. "Neesha's just finished preparing the evening meal. I hope you haven't eaten already?"  
  
"Only a mouthful or two to take the edge off my hunger." The Cardassian sense of smell was keener than that of many other humanoid species: even through the tendrils of incense Garak was picking up the scent of all that bared skin, and guilt or no, his appetite was definitely not hankering after whatever illusory delicacies this program could provide.   
  
A satisfied grin. "Good. I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of Middle Eastern cuisine."  
  
Now Garak permitted his eyes to wander over Julian's body, critically surveying every aspect of his clothing. " _This_  is what your ancestors habitually wore?"  
  
The gleaming smile turned sheepish. "Well, no, not really. It's —"  
  
A curtain at the far end of the tent was raised and a buxom young woman undulated in, carrying a large and heavily laden tray: darker than Julian with a long tumble of wavy black hair, the lower part of her face demurely veiled, the rest of her outfit leaving very little to the imagination. Garak watched her approach and gracefully place her burden on the table in front of them, noting that she was pretty enough and her feet were very shapely, but his knowledge that she was a trick of light and energy rendered her singularly non-sexually attractive. Once her burden was safely set down she straightened in a way that prominently presented her rounded bosom and asked in a low submissive murmur: "Do my Masters require any other comforts?"  
  
The implication was clear, and Garak watched with interest the way Julian blushed slightly. "No, Neesha, thank you — only some chilled mint tea for my friend."  
  
The illusion of a slave pressed the palms of her hands together and bowed low. "As my Master commands," she intoned, and took her leave through the curtain again with a leisurely sway of her wide hips and a flirty jingle of the bells that bordered her gauzy skirt.   
  
Once she was gone Garak turned his attention to Julian once more. "Do I really want to know?" he quipped.  
  
The flush was lingering on those unadorned cheeks, but there was a twinkle of mischief there as well. "I brought a few programs based on this time period with me from Earth, of which this is probably the least historically accurate — but it has the most beautiful stage dressing of any of them. Can you forgive me the non-architectural details?"  
  
"I can, as long as you don't expect to involve them in anything other than bringing us food." He was scanning the tray now, taking in the intriguing foodstuffs and appreciating the scents rising from them, and was so startled when Julian's left hand came to rest on top of his own that he almost visibly flinched. Glancing round, he met the Human's solemn and smouldering gaze.  
  
"Believe me, Garak," Julian said in a tone of caressing promise, "for the next few hours it will be just you… and me."  
  
The boldness of that unsolicited touch had rattled him more than he could afford to reveal. "I'm honoured to be the recipient of your undivided attention. I know you're a very busy man."  
  
Neesha reappeared bearing a glass of cold mint tea, which she found space for on the table in front of Garak. As she straightened and presented her bosom again, opening her mouth to speak, Julian beat her to the punch: "Computer, deactivate the Neesha subroutine." She vanished in a shimmer of energy, and Juilan turned the full force of that charming smile on Garak again. "There. Better?"  
  
"Much, thank you." He sampled the tea, which was excellent in spite of being unreal, and politely turned his attention to the tray again. "It all looks lovely. Is any of it appropriate to this time period?"  
  
"All of it, actually." He sat up and set aside his tea. "The Bedu, more commonly known as the Bedouin, were a nomadic herding civilization who controlled large areas of desert in some of the oldest inhabited areas on Earth. Their cuisine tended to be simple, suitable for being prepared while on the move, but they were famed for their hospitality, even to their enemies."  
  
"Oh, dear," Garak said with manifest disappointment. "So I'm not to take this offer of a meal as a sign of particular favour?"  
  
Julian gave him a look indicative of affectionate exasperation. "All will be made clear in a moment. If I may continue…?"  
  
"Of course." Garak set aside his own glass and moved a little closer to the edge of the couch, the better to attend to the lesson. "You know that cross-cultural studies have always been a passion of mine."  
  
"Thank you." He leaned forward to select an item from one of the plates. "Now these… these are stuffed vine leaves, filled with a mixture of peppers, eggplant and chicken. You dip it in the yogurt, thusly…" He demonstrated, turning the morsel deftly over the bowl to let the excess sauce drip off, then lifting it — but not to his own lips. Instead he offered it to Garak. "Here you are. No," he admonished when Garak reached up to take it with his hand, "not that way. Let me feed it to you."  
  
Caught off-guard, Garak eyed the proffered food warily. "Really, Doctor, I —"  
  
"It's Julian, remember?" He extended the vine leaf a little further with a coaxing quirk of his expressive mouth. "Come on, Garak — you trust me, don't you?"  
  
"Certainly I do — but…"  
  
His finely drawn black eyebrows rose expectantly. "But?"  
  
With a sigh, Garak leaned forward and let himself be delicately fed the juicy mouthful, savouring the fleeting touch of Julian's fingers to his lips as much as the burst of spices on his tongue. He drew back as soon as it was safely enclosed and chewed slowly and swallowed without haste, giving his full attention to the experience. Julian watched him intently, seeming to take vicarious enjoyment from his pleasure. "That's… really quite tasty."  
  
"I'm glad you like it. You see? No Bedu, much less his descendent, would hand-feed his enemy." That beautiful smile bloomed again. "Next time, though, I'll expect my fingers to be licked clean." The tone was teasing; the intensity of his gaze was anything but.   
  
"Why?" Garak challenged. "Is that considered polite behaviour in your culture?"  
  
"It isn't in yours?"  
  
"I've never been to a dinner party where people fed their partners from their own hands before."  
  
"Well," Julian said, "there aren't any napkins, so I suppose the other choices are to lick them clean myself or wipe them on my clothes, and since I'm rather fond of this shirt and these pants…"  
  
"I can't imagine why." He leaned over to pick up a small triangular piece of grilled bread, dipping it in the sauce as demonstrated. "The shirt is tolerable, but really, my dear… improprieties like those trousers make me wonder if your colour vision is all that it should be."  
  
"Says the man who introduced himself to me dressed like a watermelon," Julian grinned.  
  
"I'm not sure what that is, but it doesn't sound complimentary." He offered Julian the piece of bread, narrowing his eyes, but Julian didn't hesitate to lean forward and take it from his hand, sucking his fingertips into that hot mammalian mouth and laving them with his tongue, taking his time before drawing back with a sleek feline smile.  
  
"There," Julian said when he'd finished chewing and swallowing, "wasn't that a lot more fun than doing it for yourself?"  
  
"Considering that the bread wasn't greasy in the slightest —" He got no further in his exposition of the facts: Julian leaned forward and kissed him, lightly but in a way that placed definite closing punctuation on the sentence. His lips, now that Garak wasn't perceiving them through a haze of pure shock, were soft and silky but also sure, pressing and gliding, taking his breath away.   
  
"Garak," Julian murmured when he finally drew back enough to gaze into his companion's eyes.  
  
"Yes, Doct—" He caught himself. "Yes, Julian?" His reward was a smile of approval and a warm hand laid to his cheek.  
  
"Feeding each other is a very potent expression of intimacy in many Human cultures. Will you let me?"  
  
Confronted with those appealing dark eyes, all Garak could do was draw a slow breath and try not to let their effect show. "I… I apologize. I had no intention —"  
  
Another kiss, briefer but no less electric. "Trust me," the darling boy whispered before removing his hand and returning to his previous position, and Garak, who never trusted anyone as a matter of general principle, let that charming smile allay his suspicions and allowed himself to be nourished, one delectable mouthful at a time.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	8. Chapter 8

It was undeniably pleasant, if outrageously decadent, to trade bite-sized delicacies in such an unorthodox fashion while listening to Julian talk about his distant ancestors: their love for the long-legged running beasts called horses (which Garak had already seen) and camels (which he wasn't sure he wanted to after hearing a description)… their reputations for hardiness and nobility in a punishing physical environment… their proud warrior culture and their intricate kinship system, which reminded Garak in certain respects of the Tertaka Clans of his own world's ancient history, although of course he wasn't about to reveal as much to a non-Cardassian.   
  
 _But such a fetching non-Cardassian!_  he couldn't help but muse as he watched each emotion chase across that earnest face, each quirk of eyebrows and lips, each flash of humour.  _Not a scale to be seen, yet I can't take my eyes off him._  
  
 _You've been enthralled with him for months,_  Rekerit's ghost muttered venomously. Garak saw no point in dignifying that observation with a reply; instead he nodded and smiled and drank in every detail of his companion, letting Julian lick his fingers indecently and reciprocating in a more restrained fashion, accepting each gift as it was offered, including small sweet fruits called "dates" which were by far his favourite of all the dainties available… and as careful as he was not to reveal that preference, Julian must have somehow discerned it, because he began to alternate every mouthful of other foods with one of the luscious little pods. Garak refrained from comment until Julian started adding yet another element, at which point he felt compelled to ask:   
  
"And is that also that one of your Bedouin customs?"  
  
"Mmm?" Julian, having just sat back again, was smiling affectionately.  
  
"Supplying a kiss along with each date."  
  
"Not really." He moistened his lower lip with his tongue in a way that made Garak feel cold, then hot, all over. "I just like the way your mouth tastes."  
  
"I'm not entirely sure your ancestors would approve of that," Garak sniffed, amazed at the Human's free-and-easy sensuality and how fearlessly it was expressed. Had a Cardassian behaved in a similar manner they'd be considered unpardonably gauche and quite possibly insane… but somehow, coming from Julian it didn't seem offensive. Quite the opposite, in fact, this blatant dance of seduction: it made Garak feel warm in ways that had nothing to do with the comfortable temperature of the dimly lit air, his most adamantly protective scales growing pliant beneath his layers of clothing.  
  
"They didn't approve of same-sex liaisons in general." Julian lounged sideways against the back of the couch, his body a long elegant curve with bare toes peeping from behind the angle of his left knee, and let his right arm come to rest along the couch's top, his fingertips brushing the fall of Garak's hair. "If Neesha were still here, she'd be giving us  _such_  a tongue-lashing."  
  
Garak permitted himself a wicked smirk. "I'm sure you've received plenty of those from her already, you naughty boy!"  
  
Those finely drawn dark eyebrows drew together in a little frown. "Does that bother you?"  
  
"Not in the least," Garak replied decisively. "I'm not in the habit of feeling insecure in comparison to electromagnetic puppets!"  
  
"You shouldn't feel insecure in comparison to anybody." He was playing with Garak's hair now: nothing excessive, just twining a few strands around his fingertips, but Garak found it delightfully distracting, even if the Human couldn't have any idea of what a powerfully seductive gesture it was in Cardassian terms, or what tremendous liberties he was being permitted. "Much less a one-dimensional holosuite simulation. Do you know, you're quite possibly the most intelligent man I've ever met?"  
  
He should have reached up and caught that slim brown wrist in a punishing grip and wretched that bold hand away, agent of the Order that he was. He had the dignity of his office to uphold! No doubt Julian's ancestors would have applauded. Instead he found himself tilting his head ever so slightly in a way that granted easier access. "Considering how many profoundly intelligent individuals you must have encountered in the course of your education, that's quite a compliment."  
  
"Yes, but they were all so narrowly focussed — taken out of their element, they would have been no better than average, if that." The intensity of those hazel eyes, so clear and so bright, made him want to flinch away and draw nearer at the same time. "But you… I get the feeling you could be dropped into any situation and you'd rise to the occasion magnificently."  
  
"Ah," and Garak held up an admonishing forefinger, "then I don't think 'intelligent' is the word you're looking for, is it? I think you're talking about adaptability —"  
  
Julian didn't miss a beat. "— which must be a prerequisite for a successful career as a spy, I'd imagine."  
  
"You imagine a great deal, my dear Doctor." Curse the boy, he'd started running the back of his little finger slowly up and down the top three scales of Garak's left neck ridge; Garak could practically feel the charcoal flush beginning to infuse the skin around them, the first flicker of a hiss curling up from deep within his chest. He was beginning to regret wearing a tunic that revealed so much of his throat. "That doesn't make any of it true."  
  
"You're right," Julian agreed: "I do think about you a great deal. I try to imagine who you must have been before, and what happened in your life to bring you here, so far from home."  
  
"Not far at all, really — surely I don't need to remind you that we're only a little over five light years from Cardassia Prime?" It was so strange to hear such a warm voice so near, to be regarded so fondly and caressed so flagrantly… even if it was only the touch of a single finger that made him burn. His  _trasekt_  was slicking and swelling in its tight sheath, ready to evert — but that indignity, at least, was still within his power to prevent, although it took great force of will.   
  
"Then why don't you ever go back?" the impudent boy challenged with a tiny scowl that only made him more fiercely adorable.  
  
Garak presented his most enigmatic smile. "How do you know that I haven't?"  
  
Julian regarded him for a long moment, his lips curving with some secret amusement. "Oh, I know, Garak. You  _are_  an outcast, aren't you?"  
  
A chill washed through the heat seething just below his grey skin. "What a ridiculous —"  
  
"Odo's told me many things," Julian interrupted, "including some remarks made by Gul Dukat during his time here on the station. Dukat claimed that you'd been exiled for unspecified crimes against the Cardassian State, and that the only reason he didn't have you executed was that he'd received orders from higher up to keep you alive."  
  
Now  _there_  was a crack in his armour that he hadn't realized existed, but he didn't let a trace of his dismay show. "Gul Dukat? That man couldn't be trusted to tell the truth about how many women he was sleeping with, much less about anything else! Do you honestly believe  _him_  — or rather, a second-hand report of him — over what I've told you myself?"  
  
Those dark eyes studied his face without haste; Garak repelled their gaze with an expression of mild indignation, but their essence still penetrated to his heavily shielded heart. At last Julian shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Not really." He sat up a little and leaned far enough to his left to pluck another date from the tray, keeping his right hand exactly where it was, then returned to his lounging position and bit the piece of fruit in half so sensuously that it took all of Garak's self-control not to blink and glance away: that leisurely pink tongue tasting the dark rounded skin, those sharp white teeth penetrating it, those full lips closing around it… and those hazel eyes never leaving his, full of amused heat… the promise of similar attentions to more secret flesh sent a delicious desperate pang racing through Garak's sheathed erection, almost forcing it to burst free.  
  
Once he'd swallowed Julian continued: "What matters is that you chose to come to me tonight. Everything else — all the questions, all the conflicting stories, all the lies…" He offered the other half of the date, his smile conveying pure sexual invitation. "Everything else I can live with, if you'll let me have you."  
  
"I…" He found himself so flustered that the glib flow of words, always his most dependable weapon, was caught in his throat. He had to struggle to put together a sentence. "My dear. You don't… that's very kind of you, I'm sure, but you have no idea…"  
  
Julian reached out and placed the half-date against his lips, gently but firmly. And Garak closed his eyes and opened his mouth and let it be slipped inside, spicy sweetness filling his senses as Julian leaned in and kissed him again: his lips, the tiny scales on his chin, the fine ridge that bordered the line of his jaw. When he swallowed it was against the rising  _kishaja_ : Julian was pushing aside his hair and stroking the nape of his neck with his left hand, his right hand sliding around Garak's waist and pulling him closer, and Garak's fists remained resolutely clenched for only a brief span of seconds before he surrendered and let himself touch in turn, catching hold of that slender waist through the enticingly thin silk and, for a dizzying instant, wanting to sink his teeth into Julian's throat and throw him back on the couch, to tear off those tasteless clothes and mark every centimetre of golden skin thus revealed.  _That_  was the proper response of an agent of the Order — to conquer and devour, to leave devastation in his wake…  
  
… but Julian's mouth was on his, hot and velvet-wet, opening him with such melting passion that the warning growl became a yielding hiss before it reached his lips, and he was letting himself be claimed — but a Human couldn't know the gravity of his sin, so that, at least, was all right. It was all right to moan low in his throat when Julian touched his  _erost_  and ran a savouring hand through his hair, and it was permissible to shiver when those skilful fingers examined the scales of his right neck ridge: lightly at first, then more firmly, the bright edge of raking fingernails lighting up his nervous system outrageously. He did growl when Julian let go of him, a warning rumble that provoked a purr of laughter from his alien lover as he shrugged out of his vest and shirt, never interrupting those wonderful kisses, then began to open the front of Garak's tunic, which finally provoked Garak to pull back and glare and hiss:  
  
" _Really_ , Doctor! You don't waste any time, do you?"  
  
"It's hot in here," Julian made excuse, meeting his gaze brazenly — and indeed, there was a faint sheen of sweat on his dusky skin. Garak wanted to start licking it off.   
  
"Maybe for you," he said primly, "but that argument really doesn't —" Only to be silenced by another kiss while Julian's hands continued their swift work, finishing with his tunic and pulling the thermal undershirt free of his waistband, then slipping up and under. The sensation of skin against skin on the relatively unarmored hide of his belly made Garak tense and gasp — " _Mrph!_ " — his protest muffled by that warm, coaxing, commanding mouth —  
  
— but his hands were on Julian's waist again, grasping and drawing close, and he'd never been one of those men who found comfort in xenophilia but oh, the delicate skin was like silk over the powerful muscles of that willowy back, inviting exploration. He'd never been touched like this either — no one had ever dared, much less failed so conspicuously to offer the proper signals of submission, and he wasn't sure if he was relieved or frustrated that Julian wasn't giving him either the opportunity or the space to offer them himself. Still, there was one sign he was able to give: the susurration audible even through those hungry lingering kisses, the vocalization he'd given up trying to fight or suppress — and perhaps Odo had revealed more than Garak had ever given him credit for knowing, because Julian was responding with soft little growls that, although nowhere near as resonant as those of a fellow Cardassian, were enough to quicken Garak's pulse and encourage the primal instinct to surrender —   
  
— to a point. He allowed Julian to push back his tunic and free his arms, letting it fall without a moment's thought for future wrinkles, but when the Human tried to pull up his thermal undershirt he found himself suddenly in possession of his sanity again. Every stray thought he'd ever had concerning the effect of too many slices of larish pie on his figure came rushing back all at once, and he caught hold of Julian's hands, panic making his heart leap into his throat.  
  
Julian paused in his sensual attack and drew back enough to look into Garak's eyes, frowning an unspoken question, but Garak, who had faced death without a qualm several times during his long career, found the compassion in those dark eyes impossible to bear: he buried his face against the side of Julian's dainty neck and wished that there was a handy transporter beam available to whisk him away, possibly to the other side of the quadrant so he'd have a hope of living down this moment of inexcusable want and weakness.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	9. Chapter 9

No  _deus ex machina_  appeared to sweep him away; there was only Julian's voice in his ear: "Garak…?"  
  
He drew a shaky breath, his mind racing, trying to come up with a viable plan. The one course of action that would maintain a shred of his dignity lay in pushing the boy away, rising to his feet, collecting his tunic with a brusque jerk of his arm and striding out with his head held high, then spending the rest of Bashir's tour of duty scrupulously avoiding him — but it was too late for that now, for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that Julian was a man who pursued relentlessly once he had a target in his sights.  _I could backhand him before I left,_  a remnant of cool calculation offered — and certainly, if he'd read Human customs correctly, that would send the proper message…  
  
Instead he whispered against Julian's throat: "I'm not sure you've thought this through," and he kept his head submissively bowed, his neck ridges vulnerable to any attack.  
  
Julian returned the clasping pressure of his hands and kissed his left ridge, then spoke against it, kind and commanding, soft yet devastating: "I've been thinking of nothing else since I found myself listening to your voice in the Replimat and enthralled by every word. But I didn't…" A pause. A tiny laugh. "After I'd taken the amitron treatment and was back in my right mind, I thought that you must be terribly angry with me and that no apology would ever be enough to set things right. I thought that I might have permanently lost your friendship. When you put your hands on my shoulders I was so relieved… and then, when Odo told me about the  _kishaja_ , I understood what had —"  
  
"No." It was one of the words a  _sh'arasa_  must never speak, but Garak had enough stiffness left in his spine to defy expectations. He gave his head a tiny sharp shake. "You don't understand. You _can't_  understand. You're not Cardassian, and I…" He shouldn't have lacked the courage to raise his head and look Julian in the face, but the prospect frightened him more than any blade or disruptor he'd ever been threatened with, filling his words with bitterness: "I'm afraid I'm not one of your willing beauties, real or hologramatic."  
  
"I'm well aware of that." He pushed past Garak's defensive grip to lay his hands on his belly again, undeterred by the way Garak's fingers closed around his forearms in alarm, and Garak was keenly aware of how un-slender and un-sylphlike he was, a far cry from either the Human or the Cardassian ideal of male configuration. But Julian's touch was firm, lingering on the softer scales and then following the ridges around Garak's sides inside his undershirt, drawing him into a closer embrace. "But you know, one of the first lessons my mother taught me is that when you love someone, they're always lovely to you, no matter their size or shape or colour — and she was right."  
  
The scent of hot bare skin filled Garak's senses; he closed his eyes and breathed deep, slowly, drawing in the deeper musk of the erection that Julian's lamentably ugly pants did very little to conceal, near enough to touch. He couldn't deny such clear evidence, but he had to ask: "And is it possible that you're not in your right mind at this moment?"  
  
"Oh, I'm clear of the virus." He kissed Garak's neck where the ridge began, then applied his lips a few scales further down, followed by his teeth, with a cunning twist and enough force to make Garak's internal temperature rise precipitously. "And so are you, if you're capable of having second thoughts." Another bite, making Garak tremble in his core, making his hands open and slide around Julian's silky sides and grip the small of his back, pulling him in as he murmured: "Tell me you need to stop, and I'll stop — but I don't want to. I want to give you what you're asking for, and I want to start," as he pushed at the bottom of the undershirt again, "by getting you out of this —"  
  
"But I'm not," Garak hissed desperately, unwilling to shed the last pretence he had of armour, "I'm not… the type you've wanted in the past."  
  
"Is that what's worrying you?" He could hear the Human's smile, then feel the pressure of Julian's left hand curving around the back of his head. "Look at me," he was commanded, and he did, steeling himself to endure the compassion on that narrow face. It didn't hurt half as much as he'd thought it would, the honesty that shone in Julian's eyes and burned through Garak's remaining shields like antimatter energy. "I've been with men before, although they've never been my primary orientation — but when I meet one who's brilliant and intriguing and challenging and personally compatible, and yes," as he stroked Garak's hair, " quite handsome, I think, I'm capable of giving chase —"  
  
"I've noticed," Garak interjected dryly.  
  
"Hush." A firm kiss on his lips, although Julian's eyes were sparkling with laughter.  
  
"I will  _not_  hush," Garak protested, breaking yet another rule of  _sh'arasa_  conduct, "and I don't think you'd appreciate it if I did!"  
  
"Garak, I'll listen to an entire lecture about Eroja's enigma tales if you'll just take that damned thermal shirt off." Smiling, he leaned close and kissed the lower line of aural scales running down from Garak's left ear — then bit the sensitized ridge hard enough to make Garak's eyes close blissfully and an explosive hiss escape his clenched teeth. He felt molten-hot, so incandescent that when he'd stripped the shirt off over his head, finally revealing every centimetre of skin above his waist, he wasn't even slightly chilled, and only dimly embarrassed when Julian held him at a little distance to survey his patterning of scales and ridges, tracing them with skilful fingertips for several seconds before raising his eyes to meet Garak's once more.  
  
"Beautiful," he said quietly, and his kiss was so confident that Garak's demurral died in his throat. Between kisses he whispered, "I must seem… so plain to you…"  
  
"Plain?" Garak, who had been on the verge of taking hold of the Human's waist again, paused and blinked, then caught Julian's face in both hands to hold him steady for a moment. "Plain?" he repeated, tilting his head to fix those bright hazel eyes with a gaze both amorous and exasperated. "No more than a classical statue of the Fisorat period is 'plain', or a suit of Britareen silk is 'plain', or one of your Terran roses is 'plain' — no, my dear, you are as smooth and as sweet as any of those, and beautiful in a way that's entirely your own. The perfection of your design lies in —"  
  
He got no further: Julian took firm hold of his wrists, pulled his hands down down to the level of their hearts, and silenced him most delightfully. "Garak?"  
  
"Hrm?" The tight grip and forceful kiss combined to render him uncharacteristically pliant.  
  
"I've changed my mind." A bite on his lower lip — such a little thing! — sent sweet tension thrilling through his body and weakened what was left of his resolve, and would have laid him flat on his back if Julian hadn't caught hold of his upper arms to hold him steady. "No lectures. Not right now. That's what our lunches are for."  
  
Instead of sinking backwards he leaned in, holding tight to Julian's hips and tilting his head to be kissed again even as a final misgiving struggled free of his heart to escape in a hissing sigh: "But you said it yourself… you weren't in your right mind… it was the virus…"  
  
"The virus," Julian whispered back between kisses, "is a disinhibitor — it only frees… impulses… that are already there." Those skilled hands slid up to Garak's neck ridges, caressing, then gripping tight, and atavistic reflex made him drop his head to the right and tilt his neck in a different way, baring his carotid artery to the teeth of his conqueror. Julian kissed the pulse-point with Human tenderness at odds with his punishing grasp, then concluded: "That's how I know that you truly want this, and," his voice falling to a growl that made Garak go hot all over, "I swear on the blood of my ancestors, I won't disappoint you."  
  
The dark promise in those melodiously accented tones provided a high that even his implant couldn't surpass. When Julian released him and stood up he remained where he was, gazing mutely upwards, drinking in the quiet authority that filled the Human's smooth face, and when Julian ordered him to remove his shoes and socks he obeyed at once, turning his attention downward, allowing his hair to be stroked without a murmur of protest at being treated like a child. Once he'd finished that task and neatly laid the discarded articles of clothing aside the caressing hand curved under his chin and pulled him gently to his feet; a softer kiss was pressed to his lips, the assurance of ownership it implied leaving him breathless, and then he was being guided toward the curtain at the rear of the room with Julian close behind him, half-floating, wondering if so many years in lonely exile had finally and truly driven him mad.   
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	10. Chapter 10

Julian lifted the curtain aside to let Garak pass through, and he found himself in a dim space which, with a subvocal  _thrum_  whose echoes resonated in his  _riterik_  organ, he determined to be about four metres by five metres on a side and largely empty, an impression confirmed by the illumination that leaked in from the main room even after Julian let the translucent curtain fall closed behind him. Garak paused a few steps onto the dense carpet, his natural wariness overcoming his nascent trust in his Human paramour, and shivered when Julian moved in close behind him, sliding one arm around his waist and locking it tight, moulding their bodies together and trapping his erection between his belly and the rise of Garak's buttocks.   
  
A lovely voice murmured against the shell of his ear: "Are you cold?"  
  
"Not particularly." But he trembled again as Julian's other hand came to rest on his chest, spread open over his heart. His eyes had adapted to the shadows and could now make out shapes — a broad low bed scattered with pillows, small tables on either side of the slatted wooden headboard, an unlit brazier close to the opposite wall — although he was sure Julian's less keen night vision wasn't up to the task, and he marvelled that the boy actually trusted  _him_  enough to enter a darkened room with him, nearly naked and weaponless. Why, with one quick turn and two seconds work he could easily break that slender neck as he'd broken others in his long career, most of them thicker and far more heavily armoured.   
  
Oh yes, he'd had strong men kneel at his feet, most of them begging for their lives, a few of them soliciting his touch in an attempt to win power or favour — none of them daring what this fragile boy dared, to lay hands on him as boldly as if he were a  _sh'arasa_  in truth, one who had no right to command or deny. Julian was kissing his neck, whispering that he'd keep him warm in that low seductive purr, and at the first sharp bite where his neck ridge met his shoulder Garak tilted his head back and almost sank down, but that surprisingly firm arm around him was holding him upright, holding him fast to the taller form behind him. He parted his lips, half-thinking to demand his freedom, but what escaped instead was a breathless gasp:  
  
"Oh  _yesss_ …"  
  
He should have been drowning in shame, clutching after the remnants of his terrifying reputation. Instead he let Julian steady him and breathe softly against the texture of his nape, then turn him around and tip his chin up and take his mouth again, running slow hands over the scales and ridges of his shoulders and back, slipping them down to curve around his buttocks and pull him close to the hot overt hardness of mammalian arousal. His response was to cling — primitive, yes, but ineffably satisfying, and when Julian withdrew those tempting lips to call for light and the kindling of the brazier he felt only a moment's disappointment before he realized that the lamps which had sprung to life on the flanking tables were dim enough to be kind to his more sensitive eyes.   
  
Then he was being soundly kissed again, pushed backwards until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed and they both tipped onto it, landing happily among the embroidered pillows with Julian on top, the whole warm length of him pinning Garak to the mattress, and although he could have freed himself easily he let it happen as Julian willed. He let himself be rolled onto his side and wrapped in those slim arms and he enfolded the Human in turn, revelling in the sturdiness of that body which looked so deceptively slight but was proving more than capable of enduring a Cardassian's embrace.   
  
For a long span of time all was shared breath and exploring hands and more hungry kisses. Garak had never been kissed so much in his entire life — his previous liaisons had been long on aloof dominance and short on face-to-face connection, and he was finding that he definitely liked this new permutation. Sex between male Cardassians was almost inevitably about power: sexual, certainly, but also political, each encounter a small drama that enacted the social superiority and inferiority of the players and established both beyond question. He knew that it was different with Humans, that between these hot-blooded quick-pulsed creatures sex was about the reinforcement of interpersonal emotional bonds, and each moment he had to keep both paradigms in mind: his own, with its shameful yet thrilling inversion of his usual dynamic, and Julian's, which was an expression of… well, fondness at least, he couldn't countenance that Julian's feelings ran as deep as his smooth words of seduction might have led a more credulous man to believe.   
  
No, he was well aware of the Doctor's reputation for sweet-talking women into his bed, and why should this situation be any different? Surely those same women had been on the receiving end of these melting looks and warm smiles; surely they'd been caressed as ardently, but Garak wasn't about to let that spoil the moment. He'd learned to take what pleasure where he could in his bitter banishment and to jettison regret with the ease of long practice, and therefore he enjoyed himself immensely but denied himself one delight: he kept his hands above Julian's waist, only daring to skim a light caress down that slender right hip from time to time, for to take more was not his due in the role he'd allowed himself to be thrust into.   
  
Julian had no such compunctions: his free hand wandered at will, running over Garak's ass and thighs in a way that made him ache to evert, an impulse to surrender not helped in the least by the skillful attention he was paying to Garak's neck and ridges, licking and sucking and biting. Garak gave as good as he got in that respect, although he refrained from doing anything more forceful with his teeth than delicate nipping — there would be bruises aplenty for the Human to survey later on, and the sight of them rising on the tender golden skin created a counter-current of aggression that punctuated his hissing with soft growls. He'd never engaged in a sexual encounter so perverse in many senses of the word — and the tension ratcheted up several notches when Julian leaned close to whisper a request in his left ear, softly spoken but so blunt that Garak's eyes flew open and he bit back a gasp: "My dear! That's… unconscionably vulgar!"  
  
"But I'd love it so very, very much if you did." He caught hold of Garak's left hand and guided it between his own legs, to the hot shaft that the clinging fabric barely pretended to conceal. "With that wonderfully clever mouth of yours…"  
  
"You've lost your mind," Garak said flatly, but his hand was closing around what it found there, exploring it and feeling how smooth it was, unadorned by even a single ridge, the head plump and firm against his palm. The sensation sent waves of heat pounding through his entire body.  
  
Julian moaned softly at his touch, then bit him on his lower aural ridge and murmured persuasively: "I've been told it tastes absolutely delicious."  
  
"I'm sorry," Garak retorted, his mouth watering, "but I'm already quite full. If you'd wanted me hungry for this, you shouldn't have fed me so many dates."  
  
A seductive laugh and another lingering bite. "Would it put you more in the mood if I bound your hands behind your back?"  
  
"What a perverse notion," Garak countered, glad that his sudden increase in heart rate couldn't possibly be audible. "Whatever gave you that idea?"  
  
"I could, you know. There are cuffs under the pillows —  _ah!_ " As Garak bit back, sinking his teeth into that slim smooth shoulder with a vengeance, almost hard enough to break the skin. "Oh, you _would_  like that, wouldn't you? I thought you might…"  
  
The boy sounded far too smug, definitely in need of a good lesson, so Garak pushed him, and Julian pushed back, and within a couple of seconds they were rolling around forcefully on the wide mattress, grabbing for each other's wrists and grappling with their legs, trying to pin each other. Garak quickly discovered that the Federation military taught its officers a thing or two about getting out of holds, but Julian was learning the same lesson about Obsidian Order operatives, and in the end it was instinct that decided the contest — namely Garak's, because in his heart he wanted to end up on the bottom. Flat on his back, staring up into Julian's smiling eyes as they both panted, he twisted his wrists in Julian's firm grip and bucked beneath him, but the slimmer man was securely seated on his waist and showed no inclination to dismount.  
  
"You'll have to let go of me sooner or later," he warned, letting a hint of threat flash into his gaze, "and when you do…"  
  
Julian laughed aloud, then leaned over to kiss him soundly. "If you really wanted out from under me," he whispered when their lips finally and reluctantly parted, "I'd be on the floor right now. Now, are we going to talk all night, or are you going to suck my cock?"  
  
"You're awfully full of yourself, aren't you?" Garak sputtered, swelling with outrage above and lust below.   
  
"Not half as full of myself as you're going to be once you've gotten me nicely juiced up." Another kiss, slower and more penetrating; he let go of Garak's right wrist and brought his hand to Garak's cheek, curving around it and caressing it, tracing the ridge that encircled his eye socket with a coaxing touch. "Don't you want to?" he asked, pulling back enough to look Garak directly in the eyes with a hint of a pout. "Even a little?"  
  
Garak considered protesting a bit more… but his freed hand had gravitated straight to Julian's groin, where it was currently flaunting propriety by rubbing that long beautiful hardness. "As long as you understand that I'm doing this under protest."  
  
His paramour frowned. "That's not what I —"  
  
"My dear." He leaned up and nipped at Julian's full lower lip, then soothed it with a quick stroke of his tongue. A little honesty wouldn't hurt, this once. "As you've said, I'm quite capable of letting you know when I tire of our games."  _Which I won't, I fear, until you've thoroughly shamed me… oh, how the mighty have fallen!_  "However, you've bested me in fair combat, and custom dictates that you're entitled to your reward. Now let me up and make yourself comfortable, hm?"  
  
Julian's smile was exquisitely beautiful, but he hastened to do exactly as Garak asked, stripping off his trousers and tossing them carelessly to the floor in a fall of purple before lying down on his back with his head and shoulders supported on a particularly large pillow, his erection standing up proudly. Glad to see the last of those horrible pants, Garak started to move into position straddling him in turn to steal a few more kisses before he got down to business, only to be stopped by a hand on his chest: "Fair's fair. I'm naked, so you don't get to keep any of your clothes on either."  
  
"You don't want me to catch a chill, do you?" Garak asked, sounding as plaintive as he possibly could, but he should have known better than to try that tactic with a physician.  
  
"It's easily thirty degrees Celcius in here," Julian asserted, "which was the ambient temperature of Terok Nor during the Cardassian Occupation. You'll be perfectly comfortable — and I've been waiting all day for this." He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, smirking as he nodded at Garak's pants. "No more stalling, Garak — trousers off.  _Now._ "  
  
Garak would say this much for the Doctor: he could muster quite the tone of command when it suited him to do so, and that suited Garak just fine. But he wasn't about to make things too easy. He straightened his spine and fixed Julian with a haughty look. "I've consented to — what was that singularly earthy phrase you used? — oh yes, suck your cock, for which you should consider yourself sufficiently lucky. What makes you think I'm even willing to show you something that no Human has ever seen before?"  
  
"Oh, I'm sure a Human or two, here and there, has managed to talk a Cardassian male out of his pants," Julian grinned.   
  
"Well," Garak said virtuously, " _this_  Cardassian male isn't so easily persuaded!"  
  
"Yet," Julian contradicted saucily, freeing one hand to press it to Garak's groin, rubbing and groping him through the thick material of his trousers and thermal underwear. That touch almost undid him: Garak had to close his eyes and take a deep steadying breath to overcome the urge to evert, to obey the order implicit in Julian's throaty murmur: "Oh — not yet? I'll have it sooner or later, you know."  
  
"I'm sure you will." The way Julian was running the tips of his long fingers along the slit was maddening, but Garak clung to enough of his pride to restrain himself. "Now, would you rather fondle or be fondled?"  
  
"There are positions where we could do both, but since you're determined to keep your pants on…" Julian's hand shifted upward, to trace a slow hot line between the ridges that ran down the middle of Garak's chest and belly to disappear inside the waistband of his trousers. His fingers hooked into the waistband and closed tight, pulling Garak forward — hard — so that he ended up straddling the Human's hips, gazing down into his sultry face. "Be fondled. Please."  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	11. Chapter 11

Between Cardassians the touching of another male's genitals was an act of dominance, but judging by the Julian's attitude he felt that Garak would be servicing him by doing so, and with an effort Garak was able to embrace the mental adjustment necessary to view this activity in that alien light — but it took no effort whatsoever to enjoy his servitude, or the sight of his only friend panting and writhing beneath him.   
  
The shaft was silky-hot between his hands, lacking natural lubricant but nonetheless very sleek… well, perhaps not entirely lacking, there was a little clear fluid leaking from the tip, which was exquisitely sensitive if the gusty sigh Julian emitted and the way he pushed his hips briefly upward when Garak ran his thumbs over it was any indication. His gorgeous eyes, even darker with arousal, remained fixed on Garak's upper body in a way that was most disconcerting: as if he was taking pleasure in what he saw, which Garak found highly unlikely, but perhaps among Humans such a fiction was considered only polite. He had no illusions about his own appearance, his stout build further padded by a sedentary life; from a Cardassian point of view he'd never been conventionally handsome even in his prime, not the way Julian was, serpent-lithe and narrow-hipped — or Gul Dukat for that matter, who, say what you would about his personal failings, certainly cut a dashing figure and knew how to carry himself.  
  
 _And he knows it, too,_  Garak spared a quick thought to muse,  _which is part of his ongoing problem._  Julian also knew he was beautiful, and could be equally insufferable about it, but… well, Garak could forgive Julian a great deal, or find his shortcomings charming rather than annoying. What had Julian's mother said about love making all aspects of the beloved lovely? It was a distinctly unCardassian sentiment, but it was a sign of how far Garak had strayed from his correct path that he could comprehend its essential truth.  
  
Why, just look at how enthralled he was with this man's lack of adornment! Not a ridge to be seen or felt, although he did have the tiniest seam running up the underside of his erection, a texture that Garak found intriguingly anomalous. And he was such a uniform color, only his lips and his cock betraying a darker and rosier hue, with the lightest dusting of mammalian fur over most of his body, denser on his thighs and his forearms and clustering thickly in his armpits and at his groin.   
  
Garak had been attracted to people of different species and genders in the course of his life but had confined himself to sexual congress with his own kind: it was Order policy to be sexually continent, if not outright celibate, to avoid the entanglements of passion, and he'd always complied with that injunction. The men who had knelt before him and bared their napes had never moved him the way this trusting boy did, making him long to tremble with the pressure of strong brown hands caressing his sides and curiously tracing the lines of his scales, making him close his eyes when they ran up into his hair and curved around his skull, making his spine weaken and bend when they pulled him down for a kiss, then guided him down between the Human's bent knees, down that hot smooth torso past the strange nubs of nipples to the tapering strip of fur that led from the navel to the root.   
  
Resting his weight on his elbows, he took hold of Julian's hips and let himself be directed. He was intrigued by the scent of the shaft itself and wanted to taste it, but Julian's fingers were still sunk in his hair, pushing him lower with a husky murmur: "Pay some attention to my balls first… lick them… oh  _yes_ , just like that…"  
  
Salt-sweat and curls met his tongue, shockingly intimate. He applied himself assiduously to the task, framing those incredible fragile organs in the "V" between thumb and forefinger and lifting them to more easily caress them with his mouth, and Julian's breathing quickened and deepened noticeably, his thighs opening even more: submissive from a Cardassian point of view, but his hands on Garak's head were clearly directing him, and the clash of signals sent electric jolts racing through his nervous system. When Julian tugged him up he went willingly and this, oh  _this_  was something no Order agent would ever do, a sexual act that no decent Cardassian male would consider performing unless forced at gunpoint, but Garak sank his mouth down on that alien shaft without a murmur of protest or a second's hesitation and was rewarded by Julian's gasping cry and the tightening of fingers in his hair, pushing him down another couple of centimetres.   
  
"Oh, that's…" Julian was panting, his thighs quivering, then tightening, thrusting even more of him between Garak's lips. "The hissing… my God…!"  
  
Garak made a sound that he hoped conveyed both amusement and the proper degree of subservience, and continued to lick and suck, occasionally applying an edge of teeth for variety. His technique was unpolished but appeared to strike the right note, because he'd only been working at it for perhaps thirty seconds when Julian's hands clenched in his hair and pulled him forcefully off; looking up, he saw the dark intensity in his lover's face, the gleam of white teeth thinly bared in a primal expression of lust, and was torn between the urge to look away submissively and the desire to gaze forever.   
  
"Is it nice and wet?" Julian growled, his tone sending a white-hot shiver down Garak's spinal ridges in a way that made the scales rise and tingle.   
  
"Yes," he breathed, unable to break free of that commanding gaze — and not wanting to.   
  
"And are you ready to be fucked?"  
  
The raised scales laid flat again in an instant, his whole body sinking closer to the mattress and his  _trasekt_  barely breaching its tightly clenched slit, a sweet sliver of hypersensitized wet flesh burning in contact with his undergarments. "Yes…"  
  
Julian nodded toward the headboard and released him. "Get up there, then. On your back."  
  
Garak obeyed, turning to his left and rolling over, his head and shoulders coming to rest on one of the larger pillows. Cat-quick, Julian followed and ended up looming over Garak on his hands and knees, the weight of his pelvis settling on Garak's hips, pinning him down with a gaze of almost palpable force. Staring up at the Human, Garak was briefly aware of all the ways he could possibly kill this member of an enemy military from his present position. There were six of them. The tiny muscles beneath every scale on his body tightened, a hint of a growl permeating the  _kishaja_  as his inherent dominance made a break for the surface.  
  
But then Julian smiled.   
  
"Close your eyes," he instructed, "and put your hands above your head." And something just as deeply ingrained as dominance responded: Garak did as he was told, his heart sinking as he felt and heard Julian rummaging around under the nearby pillows. Within seconds something soft but tight was enclosing each wrist; his arms were pulled to each side, first the right, then the left, each positioning ending with the  _click_  of a metal ring locking into place around one of the pillars of the headboard. The sounds had a finality to them that was strangely calming; he let his head fall back and drew a deep breath, then pulled experimentally at the restraints. They held fast.   
  
It was all an illusion, of course. Even if the cuffs were real, the bed was not: a few words to the computer and this entire setting would vanish, leaving Garak free. He wasn't really bound. He wasn't really enslaved.  
  
Julian curved both hands around Garak's face, leaning in to kiss the tip of his nose. "Not too tight?" he inquired.  
  
Garak opened his eyes and looked up in astonishment: it was a question that no Cardassian would have asked under the circumstances. "No," he responded cautiously, wondering what game the Human was playing.  
  
"Good," Julian smiled with such sincerity that Garak realized there was no ulterior motive involved. Then he grew serious again, his hands sliding over Garak's shoulders to his upper arms. "I don't want you to be uncomfortable —with any of this."  
  
That left Garak only more puzzled. It wasn't his place to speak — or shouldn't have been, but curiosity got the better of him. "Uncomfortable? Why would that matter?"  
  
Julian blinked, then scowled. "Why would it —? Of course it matters!"  
  
Garak closed his eyes again and turned his head to the left, baring his throat again, and spoke in a softer register: "Of course it does. The game is yours — and so are the rules. No, my dear, you're not hurting me in any way. But —" A pause full of brief but savage internal struggle. It was perverse to yield, but even harder to speak his shame aloud. "But that, too, would be your right, if you so desired."  
  
After a moment Julian insinuated his right hand between Garak's cheek and the pillow, turning his head back again. "Look at me," he commanded, and Garak did, letting that alien beauty sheathe itself in his heart like a golden blade. "Is that what you want? For me to — to hurt you? To punish you?"  
  
He looked so concerned that Garak smiled to reassure him. "I'm not afraid of pain, Julian — and coming from your hands, it would be a gift."  _Even, I suspect, without my implant to transform suffering into pleasure…_  "What I want is your rule, no matter how you choose to impose it. Why do you think I've given myself to you, if not to be commanded? Surely even you, non-Cardassian that you are, can understand that?"  
  
Julian was studying him with every appearance of deep thoughtfulness. He nodded. "I can," he murmured, and bent to kiss Garak's mouth with a quick dip of his agile tongue. "But it's not in my nature to cause pain to those I love. I'm not going to harm you —" The quality of his voice changed, taking on a steely undertone beneath its dovelike murmur. "— but rest assured, I  _will_  expect you to accept whatever I choose to give you." His hands were on the move again, gliding down to Garak's chest, and Garak found himself relaxing under that touch against which he could mount no defence. "And I'll expect you to follow my every order — question them if you like, but in the end, you  _will_  obey. Is that understood?"  
  
"Yes." His eyes had drifted closed again, the better to appreciate that heated touch as it ran over his stomach and started tugging at the top fastener of his trousers.   
  
"Yes, what?"  
  
"Yes, Julian…"  
  
"That's better." With a surgeon's deftness he figured out the trick of opening Garak's pants, then sat up and shifted back enough to pull the fly all the way down. Garak still hadn't everted, a situation that abruptly changed when Julian stretched out on his right side and snaked his hand inside both pants and thermal underwear: the sensation of that warm skin on his most secret ridges was too much, and with a choked whimper he slid out into Julian's grasp.   
  
Julian promptly looked down to see exactly what he'd found. "Oh," he said with clear delight, "just look at how  _wet_  you are." He pushed down the underwear to get a clear field of operations and closed his fingers tightly around Garak's  _trasekt_ , running his grip up and down over the encircling ridges, gliding on the copious lubrication. "For me…. my God, it's gorgeous!"  
  
To be bound and touched so brazenly was inflaming beyond all reason: Garak had to turn his face away, and if he could have hidden it in the pillow he certainly would have. He'd never imagined that shame could feel so unbearably sweet.   
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With props to airandangels for a term for a certain part of male Cardassian anatomy, which, although applied slightly differently here, sounded so excellent that I had to borrow it. :)

Even the hand of a  _sar'havat_  would have felt good given Garak's current state of excitation — but he wasn't to be permitted the mercy of stimulation that wouldn't threaten the core of his self-control. Instead he was with Julian, whose touch was artful and precise, thorough and lingering, hot in ways that had nothing to do with mere temperature. Those long dark fingers explored Garak's  _trasekt_  as if taking its every measure: the tapering glans, so sensitive that it took all Garak's self-control not to pant and whimper when Julian rubbed and squeezed it… the shaft that thickened towards its base, circled with soft-scaled ridges that, like the head, wept clear slick fluid… the slit it emerged from, wet with run-off and, below the point where it wrapped around the root of his cock, open just enough to admit the room's warm air, a salacious display of eagerness that Garak dearly hoped the Human couldn't accurately read.   
  
The depths concealed behind its scaled lips tingled maddeningly — the most secret place on a male Cardassian's body, its name never spoken in polite company and seldom whispered even between those who performed the dance of dominance and submission… but when Julian's hand slipped down inside the crotch of Garak's pants, gliding in the unmistakable evidence of Garak's lust, Garak was not surprised to feel him lean closer and breathe a husky whisper into his right ear: "And what is this called?"  
  
"The…" He shook his head once, a small tight gesture of defiance. "I can't. I've never…"  
  
A kiss was pressed to his extended neck ridge while those long skilled fingers ran up and down the swollen flesh on either side of the slit. "But you will, won't you? With me."  
  
That was undeniable. Through clenched teeth he said: "It is called the  _esotka_ , but I wouldn't advise you to use that word in general company."  
  
"Why not?" The slow steady caress made made Garak want to jump out of his skin. "Is it an obscenity?"  
  
"Worse than that — far worse." Julian's fingers, which had been parted in a position not unlike the salute Vulcans sometimes gave, drew closer together, close enough to rub the outermost scales of the slit; Garak's thighs, which had been tensed above bended knees, sank down and opened, and he turned his hips toward his captor and the concealed words came out of him in a breathless rush: "It is rigorously unspoken. Even our doctors do their best to talk their way around it, employing all sorts of flowery euphemisms that you'd need a more thorough knowledge of High Kardasi to appreciate."  
  
"Oh?" More biting kisses on his ridge, his throat, the line of his jaw — soft lips and sharp teeth and heated breath and the scent of dates. "But… you like it when I touch it, don't you?"  
  
He bent. He broke. "Yes. Oh, yes."  
  
"Mm." A smile against the soft place under his jaw where his pulse beat hectically. "Tell me some of the other names."  
  
"That's…"  _…a secret my fellow Cardassians would rather I keep_ , he meant to say, but then Julian's middle finger found the slit itself and stroked down it from  _trasekt_  to perineum, and the piercing sweetness of the feather-light touch bore Garak's heart into his mouth: "The Purse, for one. Or, The Sabak Flower in Bud. Or, The Dawning of the Hidden Sun."  
  
"Oh, I like that last one!" His kisses were gracing Garak's cheek now, his cheekbone, the ridge that circled the orbit of his right eye. "'The Dawning of the Hidden Sun'… it sounds so  _romantic._ "  
  
He couldn't maintain necessary distance or dam the flow of easy words this man inevitably provoked; he turned his face from the pillow and back toward his paramour, his eyes still closed, drinking in the heat and the light of the beauty he couldn't see. "We're a singularly unromantic people, as you well know."  
  
Julian lightly kissed his mouth. "Well then, I'll just have to be romantic enough for both of us." Another kiss, and a murmuring whisper as his hand slipped back up to encircle and caress Garak's shaft, the tender passion of it almost too much to be endured: "You magnificent, fascinating, alluring man… aren't you happy I tied you up?"  
  
Garak opened his eyes just enough to meet the Human's smiling gaze. "Those two statements would seem to contradict each other, wouldn't they?"  
  
"Not really." He glanced up at Garak's bound wrists. "There's a long history in Terran sexual culture of bondage between lovers."  
  
"Is there? I had no idea." He clenched his fists and twisted slightly against his restraints, mustering about a quarter of his strength in spite of the instinctive imperative to lie back and submit. Both the cuffs and the metal links that connected them to the headboard held fast. "So I take it you've done this before?"  
  
"Once or twice, when my partner of the moment asked me to. It's really not my default style."  
  
"Oh." He wasn't sure whether to smile or look disappointed, and ended up with a mouth-twitch that surely communicated neither. "Well, if your heart isn't really in this —"  
  
The gleam in Julian's eyes grew even brighter. "Oh, my heart's in it, all right." He slid his pelvis closer, pressing his wonderfully hard erection against Garak's hip through his trousers. "Along with every other part of me. God, you look delicious like this!" His stroking hand paused on the head and squeezed briefly. "Would you mind terribly if I sucked your cock?"  
  
"I —" The sheer salaciousness of it, so counter to what Cardassian culture would permit, shocked and thrilled him to his core. "Do  _all_  Humans talk like this in the heat of passion?"  
  
"Only the very best ones." He nuzzled against Garak's neck, sharp teeth working at his scales, and Garak's head tipped back helplessly. "Please? In the interests of transparency… I'll confess… I've never done it before… but I've had it done to me… a lot… and I'm a quick student…"  
  
"My darling." He could barely find the breath to speak, his  _trasekt_  throbbing and slicking, his  _esotka_  burning. "My  _etara_ … as you will…"  
  
"Mmmm." A smug purr. He began to kiss and bite his way down Garak's throat. " _Etara_ … what's that mean?"  
  
His eyes had drifted closed again. "It's… what you became when I let you bind me."  
  
"Hm." Onto his chest now, nimble tongue and nipping teeth marking the ridges that curved toward his sternum, that warm brown hand stroking up and down his full weeping length, from tip to slit and back again. "And does it mean that I can touch you wherever I like?"  
  
"I wouldn't dream of stopping you." And for once he spoke nothing less than the truth.  
  
"Anywhere?" A pause to tug Garak's pants down his thighs enough to get some working room; then strong fingertips returned, focussed on the slit, caressing with more pressure. "Even in here?"  
  
Before Garak could stop himself his hips pushed up and forward, toward that illicit touch. And Julian laughed low in his throat in recognition of the signal. "I was hoping you'd say that. Mm, it feels so nice and tight… could I fit inside, do you think?"  
  
Denial and plea clashed on Garak's usually glib tongue, rendering him mute. Of course there were rumours that some males allowed their  _esotka_  to be fondled, and that some even liked it, but Garak had never heard so much as a whisper that they might permit the Purse to be opened by an  _etara_ , no matter how masterful. A moment's thought, of course, revealed that it certainly  _could_  be thus opened — there were forms of interrogation that relied on precisely that physiological factor — and that with the  _trasekt_  everted there'd be room for —   
  
Julian's mouth was roaming lower, adoring the soft hide of Garak's stomach where Humans had their odd navels. Garak's pulse was hammering under his jaw and behind every scale as he let it happen, let those tender lips press a final kiss to his belly and pull away, let them enclose the head of his erection as the Human's fingertips stroked and pressed deep between his legs , slipping inside just enough to find the hypersensitized secret flesh that swelled behind the ridges of the slit. He cried out as if wounded, feeling new wetness flow to meet Julian's mouth and hand in an enthusiastic unspoken endorsement of the unthinkable: being fellated, itself an act of considerable obscenity, but also violated in a way that no Cardassian male of any rank would countenance for an instant — intolerable, inconceivable, but oh! so exquisitely  _right_.  
  
[TO BE CONTINUED…]


End file.
